The Space Thread

How high was Bezos?

Personal opinion:
For now I think Space Tourism is kinda dumb.
But if it ever starts to contribute to Space Exploration, Colonization, and Technology for the sake of Science and Human Advancement I'm gonna be very happy for it.
It just seems to be too much for the amusement of the ultra-rich right now.
(too for-profit / late-stage capitalism)
We'll see where Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin go with this very young Space Tourism Industry.
I hope they evolve it into something more like SpaceX, or any other Government Space Agency for that matter.
...

The space tourism thing with them is more of a side-project, they can use it to fund development of their main operations - which will be sub-orbital supersonic passenger flights, and flexible small satellite launches - which they can launch from pretty much anywhere by flying their converted 747 launch vehicle around, containing all required ground operations equipment, making satellite launching accessible to a lot more nations for much much cheaper (It's limited to low-earth orbit for the time being though, they've had one successful launch so far, back in January, not something which is going to be fully competing with SpaceX or other rocket based things any time soon).

Here's another opinion: the publicly/governmentally funded space programs seem to have had their biggest push in development and innovation years/decades ago. Many of those programs have been cut in one way or another. So it kind of makes sense for commercial programs to spice things up a bit. Even if this kind of innovation is more commercially driven, it still is innovation. And this helps in a number of ways. One of them being there's more opportunity for more people to put in their expertise and creativity to help push these innovations. Simply because there will be more people active in this field. This will help drive innovation. And there's more opportunity for people to become active in this field. I'd rather have them building newer/better/faster space ships than to work at some bank.

  On 7/12/2021 at 6:08 PM, Satans Little Helper said:

Here's another opinion: the publicly/governmentally funded space programs seem to have had their biggest push in development and innovation years/decades ago. Many of those programs have been cut in one way or another. So it kind of makes sense for commercial programs to spice things up a bit.

Yes, this exactly. Even some of the big NASA funded missions which are still going ahead, like Artemis, are only doing so because of politics (congresspeople ensuring money earmarked for their state stays there - I think all 50 states have a hand in the Artemis pie in some way or another). Artemis is going to cost 10x what SpaceX could do by themselves, NASA did try to cut some costs a bit by choosing SpaceX only for the moon lander, but now this decision is in review because of the aforementioned congress-graft. There's also an element of use-it-or-lose-it, NASA needs to demand money for these big projects to ensure it keeps getting funding for other things it thinks are more important, like space astronomy and interplanetary probes for doing basic space science, when cuts are needed they can take them from the bigger project - (which they did with cancelling the Mars aspect of Artemis - probably for the best, doing that in addition to the Moon with all the same technology would have been a colossal waste of money). This will hopefully become a moot point in the future if these commercial developments pay off, NASA will start requiring a much smaller budget (it's already relatively small in the grand scheme of things, but still). Signs are pretty good they will pay off though.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/1-billion-years-of-tectonic-plate-movement/

Aerial shot from Mars helicopter 

alien innit

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/05/space-junk-clean-satellite/

https://spacenews.com/china-launches-secretive-suborbital-vehicle-for-reusable-space-transportation-system/

  On 7/19/2021 at 1:42 AM, Rubin Farr said:

https://spacenews.com/china-launches-secretive-suborbital-vehicle-for-reusable-space-transportation-system/

Good job.

Also love the blatantly propagandist tone of the writing. The test flight was “clandestine”? How? It was neither illegal (what’s an illegal space flight anyway?) nor “secretive” - the article is filled with sound bites and info coming from Chinese defense contractors for crying out loud.

  On 7/19/2021 at 8:40 AM, rhmilo said:

Good job.

Also love the blatantly propagandist tone of the writing. The test flight was “clandestine”? How? It was neither illegal (what’s an illegal space flight anyway?) nor “secretive” - the article is filled with sound bites and info coming from Chinese defense contractors for crying out loud.

 

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The US kept a drone shuttle secret from the public for years, and its existence want even known until launch, so yay for us. But if China does it, Western press says naughty naughty.

That's because it's in the west. West is best.

We fear the east.

We romantisize the sunset and not the sunrise, because it's in the west. Think about that.

Yes!!!

https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-revived-from-safe-mode?utm_source=notification

i guess musk is next

Very disappointed none of these fuckers died.

billionaire russian roulette roller coaster

totally no need for taxing the rich

you know there are future plans for landing at the yacht

the carbon dump of it is nicely satanic

  On 7/20/2021 at 8:41 AM, t yst r said:

Yes!!!

https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-revived-from-safe-mode?utm_source=notification

That is so great! Without the Space Shuttle arm to grab the Hubble, repair at this point is almost impossible.

jeff bezos is garbage, less than a leftover amazon envelope, human trash, the bourgeoisie's representative sent into space through the collective capital of countless successive generations laughing and having fun, the universe today proved it's not chill when it let that craft land